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ADDRESS 



DELIVI'.UIU) BEFORE TllK 



BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



ON OCCASION OF TIIKITl 



ANNUAL CATTLE SHOW AND FAIR AT TAUNTON, 



15, 1852. 



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BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON & SON, 

22, School Street. 
1853. 



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American 3griniltorc : 



AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



ON OCCASION OP THEIR 



ANNUAL CATTLE SHOW AND FAIR AT TAUNTON, 



Oct. 15, 1852. 



^ 



BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON & SON, 

22, School Street. 

1853. 




At a meeting of the Bristol County Agricultural Society, Oct. 15, 1852, 
it was unanimously — 

Voted, That the thanks of this Society be presented to Hon. Robert C. Winthrop 
for his eloquent and instructive address, and that Mr. Winthrop be invited to furnish 
a copy for the press. 



v 



ADDRESS. 



I am not insensible, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 
Bristol County Agricultural Society, how adventurous a 
thing it is for one who has had so little personal acquain- 
tance with agriculture as myself — for one who was born 
and brought up in a city of paved streets, in which it is our 
special boast that not a blade of grass is ever permitted to 
grow — to undertake a formal address to a society of prac- 
tical farmers. 

There are those within hearing who know, however, — 
and none better than yourself, sir, — that I am no volunteer 
on this occasion and in this service ; that I am not here 
with any presumptuous proffer of information or instruc- 
tion, either to practical or to theoretical farmers; but that 
I have come in simple deference to the repeated solicita- 
tions of friends, and because I have never learned that great 
art which the fairer portion of my audience understand 
how to prize and how to practise, when teased by the im- 
portunity of admiring suitors, — the art of saying no ! 

Seriously, my friends, I am here with a deep sense of my 
own insufficiency for these things, and with a full con- 
sciousness that there are hundreds around me to whom I 
might far better offer myself as a scholar, than as a teacher, 
upon any subject connected with the cultivation of the soil, 
l 



And yet, being here, and the responsibility for my presence 
being thus fairly rested upon other shoulders, I do not in- 
tend to shrink from the legitimate service of the occasion. 
Having once put my hand to the plough, I am not disposed 
" to look back," but shall proceed to break up such a furrow 
as I can, — to turn over as large a slice as I am able, — in 
some corner or other of the wide field of agricultural dis- 
cussion. Before entering, however, upon the graver topics 
of the day, let me give expression to the emotions of plea- 
sure with which I have always witnessed these Farmers' 
Festivals, as often as I have had an opportunity of attend- 
ing them. They seem to me to come nearer to fulfilling the 
true idea of republican holidays, than any which our coun- 
try has hitherto afforded. I know not how much they may 
do for the great interest which they are primarily designed 
to promote. It might not be easy to measure their precise 
effect in improving the cultivation, or enlarging the yield, 
of the soil, — though, even as to these ends, their influence, 
I am persuaded, is by no means inconsiderable. No one, 
indeed, can doubt, that for spreading information, for ex- 
citing and directing inquiry, for encouraging experiment, 
for stimulating emulation, and for exhibiting the practical 
and beneficial results of them all, such occasions furnish 
means and opportunities which could be supplied in no 
other way ; and I venture to say, that there is not a farmer 
before me at this moment, who, if he should be rebuked on 
his return by some stay-at-home neighbor or by some over- 
anxious spouse, as having lost a day in attending the Cat- 
tle Show, would not confidently reply, that, instead of los- 
ing one day, he had gained ten, in the new ideas and fresh 
incentives which he had brought back for his future efforts. 
But, however this may be, the influence of such occa- 
sions in other ways is even more appreciable. Their influ- 
ence in the cultivation of good feelings and good fellowship 
among the friends of agriculture, and of labor generally, 



in different parts of the State and of the nation; their 
efficacy in sowing the seeds and increasing the harvest 
of mutual acquaintance, mutual regard, mutual respect, 
among all, of all classes, sexes, and occupations, who at- 
tend them ; their annual operation in garnering up in the 
hearts of each one of us a seasonable supply of good-will 
and friendly sentiment towards each other, against the day 
when personal competitions or political conflicts shall come 
round to bring blight and mildew to so many of the nobler 
feelings of the soul, and to threaten starvation and famine 
to the whole better part of our nature, — these are among 
the results of such festivals as this, which must ever com- 
mend them to the regard of every Christian philanthropist. 
You are here, my friends, from all quarters of the Old 
Colony, and from many other parts of the Common- 
wealth and of the country, from all pursuits and profes- 
sions and political parties, to join hands and hearts in fur- 
therance of the great industrial interests of the people. 
Some of you are here as practical producers, proud to dis- 
play the results of your own labor and skill in the field or 
the dairy ; and some of you have come as amateurs, gra- 
tified to behold the successes and achievements of your 
neighbors or friends. And we have all come as consu- 
mers, whether of our own or of other people's produce ; 
and we all rejoice in the assurances and evidences which 
such occasions afford, that it will not be the fault of the 
ignorance or the idleness of man, if an abundance of the 
best food shall ever be wanting to ourselves or our children. 
But we have all come, too, I trust and believe, in no vain 
and arrogant reliance on human industry or human science 
for our daily bread, but with hearts grateful towards Hea- 
ven for the gracious promise that seed-time and harvest 
shall never fail, and for the great providential agencies to 
which we primarily owe whatever of agricultural success 
we have enjoyed or witnessed. 



For, indeed, if there be any thing calculated to inspire a 
spirit of devout dependence and gratitude in the heart of 
man, it is the course of nature as contemplated in the ope- 
rations of the husbandman. There are at least two things 
which a farmer can never do without, — the sun and the 
shower. No industry, no science, can supply their place. 
For almost every thing else there may be some sort of sub- 
stitute contrived. But who can contrive a substitute for a 
day's sunshine, or even for an hour's rain ? What artifi- 
cial irrigation could prevent or mitigate the consequences 
of a midsummer's drought? What mechanical arrange- 
ment of stoves, what chemical evolution of heat, could 
stay the ravages of an early frost ? How impotent is the 
arm of man, in presence of agencies like these, blighting 
in a week, or even nipping in a night, the whole result of 
a year of toil ! We may invent curious implements and 
marvellous machines to save our own labor; but we can 
invent nothing which shall dispense with the blessing of 
God. Man may plough, man may plant ; but man cannot 
give the. increase. The great indispensable machinery of 
agriculture must ever be the " Mecanique Celeste," that 
sublime and stupendous system of suns and spheres and 
rolling orbs, moving on in serene and solemn majesty above 
us, and — 

" For ever singing, as they shine. 
The hand that made us is Divine." 

And now, Mr. President and Gentlemen, I am here for no 
rhetorical display. I shall attempt nothing of the poetry or 
romance of agriculture. But I desire to invite your atten- 
tion to a few plain and practical considerations, which have 
struck me as not unimportant or uninteresting in them- 
selves, and as not inappropriate to an occasion of this sort. 

Few things have been more noticeable, and few things, I 
am sure, more gratifying to us all, than the increased inter- 



est which has been lately manifested in many parts of the 
Union, and more especially in our own Commonwealth, 
in the honored cause for which you are associated. We 
have all witnessed with no ordinary satisfaction the efforts 
which have been made, and which have been so success- 
fully made, to awaken the public mind to a deeper sense 
of the importance and dignity of agricultural pursuits. 
We have all rejoiced to find some of our ablest and most 
accomplished minds devoting themselves to subjects con- 
nected with the cultivation of land, the improvement of 
stock, the scientific analysis of soils and of plants, and the 
preservation and propagation of fruit-trees and forest- 
trees. The best wishes and the best hopes of us all have 
attended the local and the national conventions which 
have been held on the subject during the past year ; and 
we have hailed with peculiar pleasure the establishment and 
organization of a Board of Agriculture, under the auspices 
of our own Commonwealth. 

I think we shall acknowledge, however, that it is of the 
highest importance, at such a moment, that we should 
have some correct and exact ideas as to what is to be 
done, and as to what can be accomplished, in this behalf; 
that we should take a careful survey of the actual condi- 
tion of American agriculture and of the real wants of the 
American farmer ; so that we may propose to ourselves 
some definite, practical, and practicable ends, and so that 
our efforts may terminate in something better than vague 
promises, exaggerated estimates, and false expectations. 
We have been accustomed, of late years, to hear from 
some quarters of the country, and from some parts of the 
community, language of this sort : — Agriculture is a ne- 
glected interest. Government does nothing for it. Legis- 
lators, State and National, can find time and can find 
inducements for promoting and for protecting every other 
employment and occupation of the people. They can do 



every thing for commerce. They can do every thing for 
the fisheries. They can do every thing for manufactures 
and the mechanic arts. But the farmers can find nobody 
to do or to say any thing in their behalf. 

Now, I will not stop to inquire directly how far this 
language is reasonable or just, either towards our State or 
National Governments. Nor will I do more than suggest, 
in this connection, that, if there has been any wrong of this 
kind, whether of omission or of commission, the redress has 
always been within the reach of the injured parties; the 
farmers having always been a great majority in the na- 
tion at large, embracing, it is estimated, "more than three- 
fourths of the population," and having thus had it always in 
their power to control the action of the Government at any 
time, through the simple agency of the elective franchise. 

But taking it for granted, for a moment, that the allega- 
tion has been well laid, that the grievance has been real, 
that an interposition has at last been successfully made, 
and that the farmers are henceforth about to have their 
own way in the affairs of the country, I am disposed to 
ask some such questions as these: — What can Government 
do for American agriculture? What can it do for the in- 
terests and welfare of the farmers ? What could it ever 
have done ? What has it done or left undone hitherto ? 

I do not state these questions as distinct propositions, to 
be distinctly and formally treated in the order in which 
they have been stated, like the heads of an old-fashioned 
sermon, but as presenting the details of a general inquiry 
which I desire to institute, and, as far as possible, within 
the reasonable limits of such a discourse, to answer. 

And here, at the outset, let me remark, that it is not 
altogether easy or practicable to treat the agricultural inter- 
ests of the United States as a single idea, and to include 
them all as the subject of a common discussion. When 
we speak of British agriculture or of European agriculture, 



we have in our minds a homogeneous subject. But the 
vast territorial extent of our country, and its varied soils 
and climates and productions, prevent altogether that per- 
fect unity and identity of interest which are found among 
the tillers of the earth in other lands. The planting in- 
terests of the Southern States present, I need not say, a 
totally different subject of discussion from the farming in- 
terests of the Northern and Western States. The charac- 
ter of the labor by which the great crops of the South are 
raised, and the purposes to which they are applied, make 
them an obvious exception to the general subject of Ame- 
rican agriculture, or, at any rate, so distinct a branch of it 
as requires a distinct and separate consideration. 

I intend, then, in these remarks, to confine myself to the 
agriculture which is carried on by the hands of freemen, 
and which is generally occupied in the production of food. 

And in reference to American agriculture, as thus under- 
stood, I begin by asserting that Government can do little 
or nothing for its protection, in the sense in which the term 
" protection" is employed in such connections, by any di- 
rect means ; and that, even were what is called " the Pro- 
tecting System," the established policy of the country, it 
would be impossible to apply it to any considerable extent, 
directly and immediately, to agriculture. 

The protection of agriculture is an idea plainly applica- 
ble to countries in which food cannot be produced in suffi- 
cient quantities to meet the wants of the population, or in 
which it cannot be produced at all, except at a higher cost 
than that at which it could be procured from other sources 
of supply. It supposes a competition, actual, or at least 
possible, in our own markets with the products of our own 
fields. It is a protection against something, and that some- 
thing is obviously foreign importation. 

Great Britain may be in a condition to protect her agri- 
culture. And she did so in earnest, and most effectively, 



8 

for a long series of years, by a systematic arrangement of 
prohibitory duties or sliding scales. She may now find it 
more consistent with her general welfare, — more for her 
advantage, in view of her manufacturing and commercial 
interests, — more for the improvement of her whole condi- 
tion, to relax or abandon this system for a time or alto- 
gether. But this is a question with her of policy, and not 
of power. Nobody doubts that the state of British agri- 
culture, the relation of production to population, the pro- 
portion of supply to demand, render it susceptible of this 
sort of governmental protection. And so it may be, and so 
it is, with other countries of the Old World, and perhaps 
of the New. 

But what could prohibitory duties or sliding scales, ap- 
plied to agricultural productions, accomplish for the Ame- 
rican farmer? Is there any scarcity of food among us, 
inviting supplies from abroad? Can food be raised in 
other regions, and imported into our country, at lower rates 
than those at which we can raise it for ourselves? Do any 
foreign products of the soil enter into injurious competition 
with our own products in the American market? There 
may be a little flax-seed, a little coarse wool, or a few 
hides, brought here from South America or the East In- 
dies ; and now and then, during the prevalence of a myste- 
rious blight, our provincial neighbors may supply us with a 
few potatoes, or even with a little wheat. But these are 
exceptional cases, entirely capable of explanation, if they 
were important enough to justify the consumption of time 
which such an explanation would involve. 

The great peculiarity in the condition of the United 
States is, I need not say, its immense and immeasurable 
agricultural resources. Our boundless extent of fertile 
land, and the hardly more than nominal price at which it 
may be purchased, have settled the question for a thousand 
years, if not for ever, that, unless in some extraordinary 



emergency of famine or of civil war, our farmers will have 
the undisputed control of our own markets, without the aid 
of prohibitory duties or protective tariffs. It may be said 
to be with our lands, as it certainly is with our liberties: 
the condition of both may be described by the striking 
couplet of Dryden: — 

" Our only grievance is excess of ease, 
Freedom our pain, and plenty our disease." 

Other Governments can do much more for political liberty 
than our Government can do, because there is so much 
more of this sort in other countries left to be done. We 
have a noble system of independence and freedom, already 
established and secured to us by the toil and treasure and 
blood of our fathers. We of this generation may say 
with the glorious apostle : " With a great price purchased 
they this freedom ; but we were born free." The most, 
therefore, that any American Government can do now is 
to maintain, uphold, and administer, according to the true 
spirit and intent of those who acquired it, the ample patri- 
mony of freedom which has been bequeathed to us. God 
grant that there may never be wanting to us rulers capable 
of doing so ! 

And now, my friends, Nature — I should rather say, 
a kind Providence — has done for our agricultural condi- 
tion very much what the wisdom and valor of our fathers 
have effected for our political condition. It has given us a 
vast extent of virgin soil, susceptible of every variety of 
culture, and capable of yielding food for countless millions 
beyond our present population. It is ours to occupy, to 
enjoy, to improve and preserve it ; and no protective sys- 
tem's are necessary to secure a market for as much of its 
produce as we, and our children, and our children's children 
for a hundred generations, can eat. Government can thus 
do nothing, nothing whatever, in the way of direct and im- 
2 



10 



mediate protection to American agriculture. And when it 
is said, therefore, that our legislators can protect commerce, 
can protect manufactures, can find time to look after all 
the interests of the merchant, the mechanic, the artisan, 
the navigator, and the fisherman, but can find no time to 
look after the interests of the farmer, — let it not be forgot- 
ten that such protection as may be afforded to commerce 
and manufactures, through the aid of a revenue system, is, 
from the nature of things, impracticable and impossible for 
agriculture. Let it not be forgotten, that, as to the great 
mass of human food which our soil supplies, we have a 
natural and perpetual monopoly in our own markets for as 
much as we can any way furnish mouths to consume or 
money to pay for. The ability to consume, in a word, 
pecuniary or physical, is the only limit to the demand for 
agricultural produce among ourselves ; and this ability can 
by no possibility be affected by any legislative measures 
directed to the immediate promotion or protection of agri- 
culture. 

And here let me suggest a distinction, which, though 
often lost sight of, is, in this country at least, a real dis- 
tinction, and not unworthy of serious attention : I mean 
the distinction between the promotion of agriculture, and 
the promotion of the immediate interests of those engaged 
in it. The promotion of agriculture looks obviously to 
an extended and an improved cultivation of the soil, to 
the introduction of better processes and better implements 
of agricultural labor, and to the consequent production of 
larger crops and more luxuriant harvests. But would such 
results be necessarily for the immediate benefit of the great 
body of American farmers? Would their condition, as 
individuals or as an aggregate class, be improved, — would 
their crops be enhanced in price, or stand a chance of com- 
manding a convenient sale at any price, if the number of 
farmers were multiplied, if the breadth of land under culti- 



11 



vation were extended, and if, by the aid of greater science, 
of new manures, new machines, and new modes of culture, 
each one of them could double the yield of every acre of 
his land ? Is it not obvious, that, unless new and adequate 
markets were simultaneously opened, the only consequence 
would be a still greater overplus of production, a still 
greater diminution of agricultural produce, and a still 
greater depression of the individual prosperity and wel- 
fare of the farmers ? 

The result of both the considerations which I have thus 
far suggested is the same. The great agricultural want of 
our country is the want of consumers and not of producers, 
of mouths and not of hands, of markets and not of crops. 
And this is a want which no government protection, like 
that which has been, or may be, afforded to manufactures 
or to commerce, can possibly supply. On the contrary, 
that sort of protection would only increase the difficulty, 
and aggravate the disease. 

Indeed, the policy of our Government, in one particu- 
lar at least, has already tended greatly to this result : I 
mean its Public Land Policy. Who can say that Govern- 
ment has done nothing for the protection of agriculture, 
who contemplates, for an instant, the course and conse- 
quences of this gigantic system? Consider the expendi- 
ture of care and of money, at which our vast territorial 
possessions have been acquired ! Consider the expensive 
negociations, and the still more expensive wars, by which 
they have been purchased or conquered from foreign na- 
tions or from the Indian tribes! Consider the complicated 
and costly machinery of their survey and sale, and the sys- 
tematic provisions which have been made for securing to 
every settler that first great want of an independent farmer, 
— a perfect title to his land ! And then consider the almost 
nominal price at which any number of acres may be pur- 
chased ! 



12 



I would not question the wisdom of this policy, for the 
purposes for which it was designed. It was designed to 
effect an early settlement and civilization of the great West; 
and its wisdom is justified by the existence, at so early a 
period after its adoption, of so many populous and pros- 
perous States, in regions which were, seemingly but yester- 
day, the abodes of wild beasts or wilder men. We hail 
those new and noble States, as they successively and 
rapidly advance to maturity, as the proudest products of 
our land, and welcome them to the privileges and the 
glories of a Union which we pray may be perpetual. 

The influences of this policy, in some other ways, may 
have been of a more doubtful character. But who can say 
that the American Government has done nothing for agri- 
culture, with such a policy, so long and systematically 
pursued, before his eyes ? What greater bounty could be 
contrived for the multiplication of farmers, and for the 
extended cultivation of the soil, than the standing offer of 
the best land in the world, with its title guaranteed by 
the strong arm of the nation, and its muniments deposited 
in the iron safes of the Government, at a dollar and a quar- 
ter an acre ? — unless, indeed, it be found in the absolute 
gift of a homestead to every settler for two or three years, 
or in the " vote yourself a farm," or " land for the landless," 
projects of the present day. What has the Government 
ever done for commerce or for manufactures, which can 
compare with this great bonus to agriculture ? Nay, what 
has the Government ever done, or ever been able to do, to 
counteract the constant drain upon commercial and manu- 
facturing labor which this system has created? 

No one, I suppose, can doubt that one of the great obsta- 
cles in the way of establishing and maintaining a manu- 
facturing system, and of building up the mechanic arts, in 
these Eastern States, has been the constant inducement 
and temptation to leave home and go off to the West, 



13 



which have been held out, in the fertility and cheapness of 
the Western lands, to the young men and young women, 
whose hands were essential to the loom, the spindle, the 
lapstone or the anvil. The absolute necessity of counter- 
acting these inducements and temptations, by an increased 
rate of wages at home, has materially aggravated one of 
the greatest difficulties which we have encountered, in the 
way of a successful competition with the manufacturers of 
the old world. The influence of the luxuriant prairies and 
rich bottoms of Illinois, and Indiana, and Iowa, and Wis- 
consin, and the rest, has been similar to that of the placers 
and gold mines of California at the present moment; and, 
though less in degree, has been far more steady and dura- 
ble than that is likely to be. Our young men and young 
women will not be long in learning, that there are more pro- 
fitable diggings, in the long run, on this side of the Rocky 
Mountains than on the other. They will not be long in 
appreciating the philosophy of the cock, in the old fable of 
JEsop, who discovered that corn was a more reliable trea- 
sure than jewels. They will not be long in realizing, that 
even golden carrots may be a more certain crop than carats 
of gold. They will soon understand the wisdom of Frank- 
lin, in his conclusion of one of the numbers of the " Busy 
Body," — a little series of essays published by him in Phi- 
ladelphia in 1729, and which, though among his earliest 
compositions, are replete with the wit and shrewdness and 
sterling common sense which characterized his maturer 
productions. 

" I shall conclude," said he, " with the words of my dis- 
creet friend, Agricola, of Chester County, when he gave 
his son a good plantation, — ' My son, I give thee now a 
valuable parcel of land. I assure thee I have found a con- 
siderable quantity of gold by digging there : thee may'st 
do the same; but thee must carefully observe this, — never 
to dig more than plough-deep.' " 



14 



The temptations of good land will last longer than those 
of gold mines. There is a love for acres. There is a charm 
in independent proprietorship. There is health, and happi- 
ness, and a sense of freedom, in rural life and rural labor. 
There is a proud consciousness of virtue, and of worth, and 
of self-reliance, in the breast of the honest and industrious 
farmer, like that to which the simple shepherd of Shak- 
speare gave utterance, when reproached by the clown with 
a want of courtly manners : — 

" Sir, I am a true laborer. I earn that I eat, get that I 
wear ; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness ; glad 
of other men's good, content with my harm ; and the great- 
est of my pride is to see my ewes graze, and my lambs 
suck." 

Feelings and instincts like these, to which no bosom is a 
stranger, will outweigh and outlast the temptations of the 
richest placers of the Pacific, and will create a yearning 
towards the broad fields and noble forests of the great 
West, in the hearts of our enterprising young men and 
young women, as long as a single township or a single 
quarter section shall remain unsold or unsettled. That 
whole vast domain will thus continue to operate in the 
future, as it has operated in the past, as a continual govern- 
ment bounty upon the multiplication of farmers, and the 
extension of agriculture. 

And now, having said thus much, and the limits of this 
address will not allow me to say more, both in regard to 
what Government cannot do for American agriculture, and 
also as to what it actually has done in the past, I come to 
a brief consideration of what it can do, and what it ought 
to do, in the future. 

In the first place, it can adopt systematic, comprehensive, 
and permanent measures for ascertaining from year to year, 
or certainly from census to census, the actual condition of 
our country in relation to agriculture, the quantity of land 



15 



under cultivation, the proportion of cultivated land devoted 
to the production of different articles of food, the relation of 
production to population in the various States and in the 
country at large, the comparative productiveness of the 
same crops in different parts of the Union and under dif- 
ferent modes of culture, and generally whatever details 
may be included in a complete statistical account of Ame- 
rican agriculture. 

Our commercial and navigating statistics are already 
provided for, as incidental to our revenue-system. We 
need similar returns both of our agriculture and our manu- 
factures ; and I should not be sorry to have them committed 
to a common bureau. 

One of the brief sayings, which have given a name and a 
perpetual fame to the Seven Wise Men of Ancient Greece, 
is the simple precept, " Know thyself." And a celebrated 
Latin poet has not been willing to regard it as a mere say- 
ing of human origin, but has emphatically declared that 
it descended from heaven. 

It was a saying addressed to individual man, and un- 
doubtedly contemplated that self-examination, that search- 
ing of the heart, which is a duty of higher than human 
authority, and which is essential to all moral or spiritual 
improvement. But it is a doctrine as applicable to the 
outer as to the inner man, and as essential to the progress 
and improvement of nations as of individuals. And this 
country, beyond all other countries, needs to know itself, to 
understand its own condition, to watch closely its own pro- 
gress, to keep the run of it, as we may well say, for it is 
always on the run, advancing and going ahead with a rapi- 
dity never before witnessed, or dreamed of. More especially 
should the industry of our country know itself, and realize 
its own condition and circumstances. American labor, in 
all its branches, should have a map, on which it may behold 
its own aggregate position, and its own individual relations, 



16 



and by which it may be enabled to see what obstructions 
and interferences are in the way of its prosperous progress ; 
to see particularly where it obstructs itself, by pressing into 
departments already too crowded, and where it may obtain 
relief and elbow-room in departments not yet occupied. 
American agriculture, above all, should be able to look it- 
self fairly in the face, as in a mirror, through the medium of 
the most detailed and exact periodical surveys, that it may 
discover seasonably any symptoms of over-action or of 
under-action, if there be any; and that it may run no risk 
of expending and wasting its energies in unprofitable toils. 

In the next place, Government, State and National, can 
encourage agricultural science, and promote agricultural 
education. 

This subject has been so nearly exhausted, during the 
last year or two, by President Hitchcock's report to our 
own Legislature, by Dr. Lee's reports to the Patent Office 
at Washington, and by the lectures and addresses in which 
it has been treated in all parts of the country, that I propose 
to notice it very briefly. 

Undoubtedly the noble system of common school edu- 
cation, which is already in existence among us, and for 
which we can never be too grateful to our Puritan Fathers, 
is itself no small aid to the cause of agriculture. The far- 
mers, and the farmers' children, enjoy their full share of its 
benefits. It furnishes that original sub-soil ploughing to 
the youthful mind which is essential to the success of 
whatever other culture it may be destined to undergo. 
There is no education, after all, which can take the place 
of reading, writing, and keeping accounts ; and the young 
man who is master of these elemental arts, and whose 
eye has been sharpened by observation, and his mind 
trained to reflection, and his heart disciplined to a sense of 
moral and religious responsibility, — and these are the 
great ends and the great achievements of our common 



17 



schools, — will not go forth to the work of his life, whether 
it be manual or mental, whether of the loom or the anvil, of 
the pen or the plough, without the real, indispensable requi- 
sites for success. The great secret and solution of the 
wonderful advance which has been witnessed of late years, 
in all the useful arts, has been the union of the thinking 
mind and the working hand in the same person. Hereto- 
fore, for long ages, they have been everywhere separated. 
One set of men have done the thinking, and another set 
of men have done the working. The land has been tilled, 
the loom has been tended, the hammer and the hoe have 
been wielded, by slaves, or by men hardly more intelligent 
or independent than their brute yoke-fellows. In other 
countries, to a considerable extent, and even in our own, so 
far as one region and one race are concerned, this separa- 
tion still exists. But a great change has been brought 
about by the gradual progress of free institutions ; and, in 
the Free States of our own country especially, we see a 
complete combination of the working hand and the think- 
ing mind, of the strong arm and the intelligent soul, in the 
same human frame. This has been the glorious result of 
our common school system, the cost of which, great as it 
has been and still is, has been remunerated a thousand fold, 
even in a mere pecuniary way, by the improvements, inven- 
tions, discoveries, and savings of all sorts, which have been 
made by educated labor in all the varied departments of 
human industry. It is now everywhere seen and admitted, 
that the most expensive labor which can be employed is 
ignorant labor ; and, fortunately, there is very little of it left 
in the American market. 

But, while the great substratum of all education for all 
pursuits is abundantly and admirably supplied by our com- 
mon schools, no one can fail to perceive, or hesitate to 
admit, the advantages which may accrue from something 
of a more specific and supplementary instruction for those 

3 



18 



to whom the care and culture of the American soil is to 
be committed. The earth beneath us has been too long 
regarded and treated as something incapable of being 
injured by any thing short of a natural convulsion, or a 
providential cataclysm. We have been so long accus- 
tomed to dig it, and ditch it, and drain it, and hoe it, and 
rake it, and harrow it, and trample it under our feet, and 
plough long furrows in its back ; and have so long found it 
repaying such treatment by larger and larger measures of 
endurance, generosity, and beneficence, — that we have been 
ready to regard it as absolutely insensible to injury. Be- 
cause our chains and stakes have exhibited from year to year 
the same superficial measurements, we have flattered our- 
selves that our farms were undergoing no detriment or dimi- 
nution. We have remembered the maxim of the law, " He 
who owns the soil owns it to the sky," and have been care- 
ful to let nothing interfere with our air or daylight ; but we 
have omitted to look below the surface, and to discover and 
provide against the robbery which has been annually per- 
petrated, by day and by night, upon its most valuable 
ingredients and elements. 

The discovery has at last been made, the danger has 
been revealed, the alarm has been sounded ; and if Govern- 
ment can provide bounties for the destruction of the wolves 
and bears and foxes, which threaten our flocks, our herds, 
and our hen-roosts, I see not how it can withhold some sea- 
sonable provision against the far more frequent and more 
disastrous depredations by which our soil is despoiled of its 
treasures, through the want of science and skill on the part 
of those who till it. These depredations are none the less 
treacherous, or the less formidable, I need not say, for being 
carried on in no malicious spirit, and by no hostile hands. 
The worst robberies, of every sort, moral or pecuniary, 
of character, of property, or of opportunity, are those which 
a man commits upon himself. It is due to ourselves, it is 



/ 



19 



due even more to our children, that the national soil should 
not be impaired by our ignorance or our neglect. It is a 
great trust-estate, of which each generation is entitled only 
to the use, and for the strip and waste of which the grand 
Proprietor of the Universe will hold us to account. 

Whether the promotion of agricultural education shall 
be undertaken through systematic courses of scientific lec- 
tures, or by agricultural schools and colleges, with experi- 
mental farms attached to them, or by the preparation and 
distribution of agricultural tracts and treatises, or by all 
combined, it is for the farmers to say. What they say will 
not fail to be rightly and effectively said. With them 
words will be things; for no Government will venture to 
resist their deliberate and united appeals. 

But let not the farmers, or the friends of the farmers, de- 
ceive themselves. When all that can be desired in this way 
shall have been accomplished ; when Government shall 
have done its whole duty in regard to agricultural statistics 
and agricultural science ; when the products of every State 
and of every district in the Union shall have been put in 
the way of exact and periodical ascertainment; when the 
American soil shall have been everywhere analyzed, and 
when those who till it shall have been everywhere instruct- 
ed in its peculiar adaptations, and its peculiar properties, 
and its peculiar wants ; when the whole vegetable and 
animal and mineral kingdoms shall have been raked and 
ransacked for the cheapest and most accessible and most 
effective fertilizers ; when some safe and convenient mode 
shall have been contrived (according to the late sugges- 
tion of Lord Palmerston in England) for turning back the 
drains and gutters and common sewers of our great cities 
and towns upon our farms and gardens, instead of allow- 
ing them to run waste to the sea, breeding pestilence as 
they flow, " the country thus purifying the towns, and the 
towns fertilizing the country ; " when the great doctrine of 



20 

modern science shall be practically recognized and applied, 
that there is no waste in the physical universe, nothing 
in excess, nothing useless, from the bone which the dog 
growls over at our door, to the dung of the sea-fowl, for 
which the nations of the earth are contending, on the most 
distant and desolate island, but that 

" Nature never lends 
The smallest scruple of her excellence, 
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
Herself the glory of a creditor, 
Both thanks and use ;" — 

still, still, the great want of American agriculture will re- 
main, — that want which I have alluded to, in the opening 
of this address, and to which I recur once more, for a 
few moments, in its conclusion, — the want of adequate 
markets for the sale of its produce. Nay, the want will 
only have been increased and aggravated by the greater 
fertility of our fields, and the greater abundance of our 
harvests. 

Now, it is obvious, that these markets are either to be 
supplied at home or abroad. 

And I am not one of those, if any there be, who are 
disposed to disparage the value of a foreign market for 
any thing for which we can find one. It is clearly the duty 
of our Government to make arrangements in every way in 
its power by wise negotiations and just systems of reci- 
procity, for the introduction into foreign countries of the 
largest possible amount of our surplus provisions and 
breadstuffs. Such arrangements, however, are clearly com- 
mercial arrangements; and I refer to them merely as an 
illustration, that what may seem to be done by our legis- 
lators only for the benefit of commerce, may really result in 
the most important aid and advantage to agriculture. 

I cannot pass from this topic, however, without the ex- 
pression of an opinion, that the idea of an adequate foreign 



21 



market for our agricultural surplus has proved, and will 
still prove, utterly fallacious and delusive. There is at 
least one principle, in this connection, which may be con- 
sidered as settled by the whole current of experience, and 
by all the deductions and dictates of reason and common 
sense. No large or considerable kingdom or country will 
ever be habitually dependent on the soil of other countries 
for the food of its inhabitants. Why, where would be the 
power of Great Britain, were she compelled to look abroad 
for the daily bread of her people ? What a mockery would 
be her boasted dominion over the seas! What a farce 
her world-encircling chain of colonial possessions and mili- 
tary posts ! With what face would she venture to interfere 
with our fishing-grounds, or even to maintain her own, were 
she liable to be starved out at any moment by our embar- 
goes! We should soon learn how to bring her to terms, 
as her own parliaments have so often brought her monarchs 
to terms, by a simple refusal of supplies, a simple stopping 
of rations. 

I never think, Mr. President, of this dream of some of 
our American farmers, that they are to raise food for all the 
world, without associating it with the dream of Joseph of 
old, or rather with his two successive dreams, as related to 
his brethren, and recorded in Holy Writ : — 

" Hear, I pray you," said he, " this dream which I have 
dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the 
field, and lo ! my sheaf arose, and also stood upright ; and, 
behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obei- 
sance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt 
thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have 
dominion over us ? " 

" And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his 
brethren, and said: Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; 
and, behold, the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars, 
made obeisance to me." 



22 



Sir, the one of these dreams is as likely to be fulfilled 
in our favor as the other. We may as well hope that the 
constellations of the other hemisphere will stoop to make 
obeisance to our constellation, and that the kings and 
queens of the earth will bend and do homage to our re- 
public, as that the sheaves of other lands will stand round 
about and make obeisance to our sheaf, and the agriculture 
of the world acknowledge its dependence upon our agri- 
culture. 

Indeed, the fulfilment of the one dream, as I have already 
suggested, would speedily involve the fulfilment of the 
other. No great nation can ever maintain its political in- 
dependence, except by sufferance and courtesy, when it has 
become absolutely dependent on another nation for its 
food. As to Great Britain, moreover, to whom our farmers 
have always been pointed for their most hopeful market, 
and to whom, I doubt not, they may always look confi- 
dently for an occasional demand for some varieties of agri- 
cultural produce, it is an admitted fact that she can feed 
herself, as it is, in all ordinary seasons ; and when she shall 
have brought all her reserve land into cultivation, and re- 
claimed all her swamps and bogs and marshes, and esta- 
blished a better state of things for poor Ireland, and applied 
the modern modes of systematic, scientific culture to the 
whole soil of the United Kingdom, she may defy the farm- 
ers of the world. The whole notion of John Bull's sub- 
mitting to be fed or foddered at our rack and out of our 
manger, is as visionary as that of Brother Jonathan's put- 
ting his neck back again under the old British yoke. 

Nature herself, indeed, presents an obstacle which settles 
the question for ever. It has been calculated by the late 
lamented Mr. Porter, in his Progress of the British Nation 
(a work of standard authority), that " to supply the United 
Kingdom with the simple article of wheat would call for 
the employment of more than twice the amount of ship- 



23 



ping which now annually enters our ports;" and that " to 
bring to our shores every article of agricultural produce 
in the abundance we now enjoy, would probably give 
constant occupation to the mercantile navy of the whole 
world." 

The sum of the whole matter is this : American agricul- 
ture must look at home for its great market. It must look 
to consumers upon its own soil and at its own doors for its 
only sufficient and its all-sufficient demand. The natural 
and rapid increase of population among ourselves, and from 
the native stock, will do something for it. The thronging 
multitudes of emigrants, who are landed daily on our 
shores, will do something for it. If we cannot carry over 
our corn to the hungry millions of Europe, we can bring 
the hungry millions of Europe over to take for themselves 
from our granaries. This is the necessary course of things; 
and it is to be recognized and provided for, — not resisted, 
not complained of, but regulated and accepted cheerfully, 
as our part and lot in the dispensation of Providence. Our 
colonial fathers and mothers were pilgrims and exiles; and 
though we may look for no second May-flower, and no 
second Plymouth Rock, there are honest and heroic hearts 
beating beneath many a tattered frock or weather-beaten 
jacket from the Emerald Isle or the German Empire, which 
demand and deserve our sympathy and succor; and it 
would be a dishonor to the memory of our fathers, if we, 
their civilized descendants, should be found holding out a 
less hospitable reception to the homeless exile of the pre- 
sent day, than they received even from the poor untutored 
Indian, whom they were destined so sadly to displace and 
exterminate, when he cried to them, " Welcome, English- 
men !" 

But something more than the increase of population, 
whether by multiplication at home or by immigration from 
abroad, is necessary for the relief and just remuneration of 



24 



American agriculture. Indeed (as I have already sug- 
gested), if these throngs of emigrants, and if so many of 
the young men and women of our own stock, are to swarm 
over at once to our Western lands, and enter forthwith up- 
on a life of agricultural production, they will only increase 
and aggravate the difficulties under which our farmers 
already labor. Instead of population gaining upon food, 
food will still go on gaining upon population ; instead of 
mouths waiting for bread, we shall perpetuate the specta- 
cle of bread waiting, and waiting in vain, for mouths. 

In one word, there must be a division and distribution of 
labor in our country, to a much greater extent than exists 
at present, in order that agricultural industry may receive its 
just rewards. There must be more, and more numerous, 
separate classes of consumers, distinct from the producers, 
in order that food may command a fair price, and afford 
an adequate compensation and encouragement to the labor 
which is employed in raising it. Cheap food is a blessing 
not to be spoken lightly of; but the laborer is worthy of his 
hire, and it can never be the policy of any country to have 
food so cheap that it shall not pay for the raising, that it 
shall not pay something more than the mere cost of the 
raising. It can never be the policy of a free republican 
country like ours, where the most important rights and 
duties of Government are enjoyed and exercised by all men 
alike and equally, and where intelligence, education, and 
individual independence are essential to the maintenance 
of our liberties, to reduce either the profits of land or the 
wages of labor to the standard of a bare subsistence. 

Farming is never destined to be a means of fortune-mak- 
ing, and we may all thank Heaven that it is so. If million- 
naires and capitalists and speculators could make their cent 
per cent per annum by growing corn, we should soon see 
our land bought up for permanent investment for hirelings 
to till ; and our little independent proprietors, cultivating 



25 



their own acres, would be no longer the stay and staff of 
our republican institutions and our republican principles. 
God grant that the day may never come, when this coun- 
try shall be without an independent rural population, own- 
ing no lord or master this side of Heaven ; maintaining, in 
all their purity and freshness, those rural manners and rural 
habits which are the very salt and saving grace of our 
social and our political system. God grant that the day 
may never come, when some American Goldsmith shall 
paint our rural villages deserted, our rural virtues leaving 
the land : — 

" E'en now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural virtues leave the land. 
Contented toil, and hospitable care, 
And kind, connubial tenderness, are there ; 
And piety with wishes placed above, 
And steady loyalty, and faithful love." 

But the farmer ought to have something more than a 
mere living price for his products. He ought to be able to 
lay up something to send a son to college, or to set up a 
daughter in house-keeping, or to support his wife and him- 
self, and keep the wolf from the door, when sickness or 
old age shall put a stop to their daily toil. The true pro- 
tection of agriculture, and the true promotion of the wel- 
fare of the individual farmer, are to be found, and can only 
be found, in building up the manufacturing and mechanic 
arts of our country, in creating a diversified industry, and 
in establishing more proportionate relations between the 
various departments of human labor. When this shall be 
accomplished, there will be less need of Government inter- 
vention for encouraging agricultural science and diffusing 
agricultural information. It will then cease to be recorded 
of our American agriculture, that " its two prominent fea- 
tures are its productiveness of crops, and its destructiveness 
of soil;" for it is the one of these features which leads 

4 



26 



directly to the other. It is the over-production of our agri- 
culture which causes so much of careless and destructive 
cultivation. It is the superabundance of our aggregate 
harvests which occasions the meagreness of so many of 
our individual harvests. Who cares to make his farm 
yield double its present crop, when there is so precarious a 
market for what it yields already ? Who can style him 
a benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where 
only one grew before, when the result of such a process 
must be to diminish the chances of remuneration to the 
laborer, and when doubling the product is so likely to 
divide an already inadequate price ? 

And now, my friends, I am not about to violate the 
political neutrality of this occasion, by inquiring how this 
diversified industry, which is so necessary to the prosperity 
of the farmer, and to the promotion of agriculture, is to be 
brought about ; whether by protective tariffs, or judicious 
tariffs, or moderate specific duties, or reasonable discrimi- 
nation, or by ad-valorems and free trade. This question, 
though it never ought to have been permitted to enter into 
party politics, has practically become so identified with 
them, that it must be left to other occasions. • But the 
necessity of a greater distribution of labor to the prosperity 
of all concerned in labor, and the especial need which the 
American farmer feels, at this moment, of more persons 
engaged in other pursuits, who may become purchasers 
and consumers of his produce, and the danger that the 
American soil will receive serious and permanent detriment 
from the careless, hand-to-mouth, cultivation, which such 
a state of things induces, — these are no party topics. 
They are great truths, which all must admit, and which all 
ought to lay to heart. 

There is a letter of Dr. Franklin's, written in London on 
the 22d of April, 1771, to Humphry Marshall, a Pennsyl- 
vania Farmer, which contains as much practical wisdom 



27 



as I ever remember to have found in the same compass, in 
relation to the prosperity of the American farmer. It is as 
applicable now as when it was written ; and it ought to be 
printed in good legible type, and hung up in a frame in 
every farmer's house in the Union : — 

" The Colonies," says he, " that produce provisions, grow 
very fast. But, of the countries that take off those provi- 
sions, some do not increase at all, as the European nations ; 
and others, as the "West India Colonies, not in the same 
proportion. So that, though the demand at present may 
be sufficient, it cannot long continue so. Every manufac- 
turer encouraged in our country makes part of a market 
for provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money 
to the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for the 
manufactures he supplies. Here in England," he adds, " it 
is well known and understood, that, wherever a manufac- 
ture is established which employs a number of hands, it 
raises the value of lands in the neighboring country all 
around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand 
for the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of 
money drawn by the manufacturers to their part of the 
country. It seems, therefore, the interest of all our farmers 
and owners of lands to encourage our young manufac- 
tures in preference to foreign ones, imported among us from 
distant countries." 

In these golden words of Franklin, which could find no 
better illustration the world over than here, in presence of 
those to whose lands and to whose crops yonder mills and 
furnaces and machine-shops have given a value so far 
beyond tny which they could otherwise have commanded, 
— if these golden words of Franklin, I say, could be im- 
pressed upon the heart and mind of every farmer in our 
land, there would be less complaint that our Government 
had found time to do every thing for manufactures and the 
mechanic arts, and had done nothing for agriculture ; and it 



28 



would be seen and understood, that whatever had been done 
for any one of the great interests of American labor had 
been done for all ; and that all were bound up together for 
a common weal or a common woe, incapable of separation 
or opposition. There is nothing indeed more evident, and 
nothing more beautiful, than the harmony of all the great 
industrial interests in our Union. There may be jealousies 
and rivalries and oppositions between the farmers and the 
manufacturers and the merchants elsewhere, in the old, 
closely settled, and crowded populations of Europe ; but 
there can be none reasonably, none rightfully, here. Nothing 
short of miraculous intervention, like that which watered 
the fleece of Gideon, while all the other fleeces were dry, 
can elevate one branch of industry, or one department of 
labor, at the expense of another. The highest prosperity 
of each is not only consistent with, but inseparable from, 
the highest prosperity of all. What is done for any is done 
for all ; and all find their best encouragement and protection 
in the common welfare and prosperity of the whole com- 
munity. We see, or ought to see, something of that 
mutual sympathy and succor among American laborers, of 
which so graphic a sketch is given by one of the prophets 
of Israel : " So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, 
and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote 
the anvil. They helped every one his neighbor ; and every 
one said to his brother, Be of good courage." 

The greatest division of labor, the most complete and 
cordial union among laborers, — this is the true motto 
and maxim which our condition suggests and inculcates ; 
and the American farmer should be the first to adopt and 
cherish it. 

A word or two, Mr. President and gentlemen, and only a 
word or two, in conclusion. In all that I have said, I have 
spoken, as I proposed to speak, of American agriculture, so 
far as it is occupied in the production of food, and through 



29 



the agency of free labor, in all parts of our wide-spread 
land. In looking at the agriculture of Massachusetts as a 
separate State, we find many of the circumstances, which 
characterize the agricultural condition of the country at 
large, reversed. There is no over-production of food, and 
no danger of any such over-production, for our own popu- 
lation within our own limits. On the contrary, it has been 
estimated that we are at this moment dependent on our 
sister States for more than three millions of bushels of 
breadstuffs, — being a full half of our whole consumption. 

Now, so far as this fact may fairly betoken any bad cul- 
tivation on the part of our farmers ; so far as, taken in 
connection with other facts, it indicates a deterioration of 
our soil, and a progressive disproportion between the acres 
in cultivation and the crops which they yield, — it is a fact 
deeply to be deplored, and which ought to furnish a serious 
warning to the Government and the people of the Common- 
wealth. 

But, so far as it only indicates a greater division and 
distribution of labor within our own borders ; so far as it 
is only the result of a gradual multiplication of mechanics 
and manufacturers among us, to consume the products, not 
only of our own husbandmen, but of those of other States, 
neighboring and remote, — it is a subject of positive and 
unqualified congratulation. For one, I never desire to see 
the day when Massachusetts shall feed herself. Nature has 
marked and quoted her for a different destiny. Her long 
line of indented sea-coast, stretching out around two noble 
capes, and bending in again along two noble bays, desig- 
nates her unmistakably for a commercial and navigating 
State ; and her countless fleets of coasters and fishing 
smacks and merchant-ships and whalers give ample attes- 
tation that she has not been blind to her vocation. Her 
numerous rivers and streams, with their abundant water- 
falls, designate her hardly less distinctly as a manufacturing 



30 



State ; and her sons, and her daughters too, are fast proving 
that they know how to fulfil this destiny also. A great 
agricultural State she was never made for. If she ever 
feeds herself, it will be by the decrease of her population, 
and not by the adequacy of her products. Her farmers will 
always find enough to occupy them. The perishable arti- 
cles of daily consumption, which must be found at one's 
door, or not at all, must come always from them. Their 
milk, their garden-fruits and vegetables, their hay too, and 
their eggs and poultry, can hardly be interfered with injuri- 
ously, if at all, by any supplies from abroad, and can hardly 
be furnished in too large quantities at home. But the 
cereal grains, the beef and pork and mutton, and the butter 
and cheese of other States, are, I trust, to find a still 
increasing market in Massachusetts, in exchange for the 
products of her looms and anvils and lap-stones, and for 
the earnings of her commerce and fisheries. I would gladly 
see the United States independent of all foreign nations 
for all the necessaries of life, — clothing as well as food ; 
but I do not desire to see the separate States independent 
of each other : first, because climate, soil, geographical po- 
sition, and physical condition, designate them for different 
departments of industry, and their own highest prosperity 
will be subserved by following nature ; and, second, because 
these mutual wants and mutual dependencies are among 
the strongest bonds of our blessed Union, and give the 
best guaranty that it shall endure for ever. 

Let Massachusetts do all the farming she can; and all 
that she does, let her be sure to do well. Let her transmit no 
exhausted or impoverished soil to posterity. Let her exhibit 
to all the world what industry and energy and thrift and 
temperance and education and science can do, in overcom- 
ing the disadvantages and obstacles of a hard soil and a stern 
sky. Let her be a model State in agriculture, and in what- 
ever else she undertakes. But let her not dream of feeding 



31 



herself. For myself, I should feel as if either the days of the 
American Union were numbered, or certainly as if her own 
house were about to be left unto her desolate, if the time 
should ever come when the wheat of Pennsylvania and 
Maryland, and the pork of Ohio, and the beef and mutton 
of New York and Vermont, and the yellow corn of Vir- 
ginia, and the rice of the Carolinas, could find no ready 
market for their sale, and no willing and watering mouths 
for their consumption, in the old Bay State. I delight to 
contemplate the various members of this vast republic, 
like members of a common family, not all alike, but with 
only such distinctions as become sisters ; not selfishly and 
churlishly attempting to do every thing for themselves, or 
to interfere with each other's vocation, but pursuing their 
different destinies in a spirit of mutual kindness and mu- 
tual reliance ; freely interchanging the products of their soil 
and of their skill in time of peace, and firmly interposing 
their united power for the common protection in time of 
war ; bearing each other's burdens ; supplying each other's 
wants ; remembering each other's weaknesses ; rejoicing in 
each other's prosperity ; and all clustering with eager affec- 
tion around the car of a common Liberty, — like the Hours 
in the exquisite fresco of Guido around the chariot of the 
Sun, — as it advances to scatter the shades of ignorance 
and oppression, and to spread light and freedom and hap- 
piness over the world ! 

Gentlemen, I can offer no better prayer to Heaven, either 
for human liberty or for human labor in all its branches, 
than that this spectacle of concord and harmony among 
the American States may be witnessed in still increasing 
beauty and perfection, as long as the Sun or the Hours 
shall roll on ! 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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